


The Slave Train

by StarFusion617



Category: Original Work
Genre: Auctions, Cages, Dark, Dragons, Fear, Freezing, Gen, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Major Original Character(s), Masters, Murder, Nightmares, Non-Graphic Rape, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Original work - Freeform, Prisoners, Psychological Thriller, Punishment, Refusal to Eat, Sadness, Slave auctions, Slavery, Starvation, Trapped, Violence, Whipping, Wounds, elements of greyhound racing, hopelessness, train
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27111205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarFusion617/pseuds/StarFusion617
Summary: Cobra is out enjoying a day with her friends when suddenly two of them go missing. Following an unfamiliar noise, Cobra and her remaining partner Gale discover a strange train heading along a lone track in the middle of the desert. Attempting to investigate, they are captured by the train’s drivers. Caged, bound, and losing hope, Cobra learns of the train’s imprisoned occupants and the many dark realities they are forced to endure.  Terrified and desperate, she vows to find a way to escape the mysterious Train and rescue all its prisoners.
Relationships: None
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> Okay so, I got a ridiculous amount of support on my Lumine fanfiction as I was writing it, and I was going back through the comments thinking about how I wish I had a way to see that kind of support on my original story I’m currently working on. It makes it much easier and more fun to write when you’re doing it to make people happy.
> 
> So I looked it up, and apparently you can post original works on AO3 under the Original Works tag as a way for your existing audience to see some of your original content. Most people said they like how authors can do that, because once you like a person’s writing style it’s easy to want to read their original works too.
> 
> So! Here we are. If someone seriously opposes this, I will take it down, but as far as I’m aware, no one really has a problem with original works posted on AO3.
> 
> A note before reading:  
> This will be a very dark story. As signified in the tags, it will include elements of non-graphic rape, slavery, slave auctions, forced track racing, starvation, physical punishments, and many other heavy topics. This story is based on greyhound racing, human trafficking, and slavery. It is meant to be psychological, and focuses a lot on how the characters’ psyches suffer from the situation they’re in. There is a lot of dark subject matter included in this story. Be very careful and read at your own risk - I don’t want anyone getting hurt!
> 
> Okay, now that that’s done, on with the story!

Cobra kept herself completely still, only the tips of her wings twitching. She peered through the shimmering desert air, heavy with heat, at the open landscape in front of her. She was pale yellow, the perfect color to disguise herself against the desert sand, but her friends were not. Two of them had already been found, but she knew Gale was still out there somewhere, ready to attack. She wasn’t letting him win this time!

Gale was dark gray, and the cloudy horizon shone dark with rain. Once the clouds rolled in closer, the rain would start coming down, but Cobra wasn’t worried. It hardly ever rained here, and when it did, it wasn’t very impressive.

Cobra knew Gale would come from the sky, so she kept her eyes focused upwards. She knew it would be almost impossible to see her from so high up, camouflaged against the ground, and Gale didn’t have their friend Razor’s sharp eyes.

She never expected him to drop out of the sky right in front of her face.

Cobra reared back, jaws opening in surprise, and Gale whipped his tail around to sweep her back legs out from under her. She went crashing to the sand, and Gale crouched in preparation to attack. Cobra’s eyes narrowed. He had forgotten her speed.

She bunched her hind legs under her and darted forward, slipping between Gale’s forelegs. Using her small size to her advantage, she twisted around, raked her claws across Gale’s hind legs, and shot out from under him right before he collapsed. She whirled, fast as a snake, and leaped on top of him before he could get up, positioning her jaws on either side of his neck.

Gale sighed and twisted his neck to look up at her. She jumped off, grinning at him as he climbed to his feet.

“Alright, you got me. I forgot how fast you were,” he admitted. Cobra’s grin widened until it looked almost predatory.

“True. But otherwise you might have won. You appeared out of nowhere!” she exclaimed. Gale nodded.

“I knew you would be expecting me to drop onto your back or behind you, so I used your surprise by landing right in front of you instead.”

“Nice strategy, I like it. Maybe we should start calling you something else. Something...with less power and more stealth,” Cobra teased. Gale's expression turned wounded.

“Nooo, I like my name! I can be powerful like a gale wind, it just wasn’t my strategy this time,” he whined good-naturedly. Cobra turned away.

“Alright, Breeze. Let’s go find the others,” she called over her shoulder, already slipping away.

“Don’t you dare!” she heard Gale’s voice behind her as she disappeared between two cacti.

—————

“Razor! Ash! Where are you guys?” Cobra yelled, swiveling her head back and forth in an attempt to pick up a response. Next to her, Gale shook his head.

“They were supposed to wait for us here,” he said for the sixth time. Cobra resisted the urge to bite him.

“Well obviously they didn’t,” she said instead, glancing around them. The oasis, the only obvious landmark in the desert, stretched around them. It wasn’t tiny, but they should have been able to see two other dragons were they somewhere nearby.

Suddenly Gale’s head shot up.

“What’s that sound?” he asked, turning a confused gaze on her.

She listened, staring off into the distance as she strained to hear whatever it was that had her friend so shaken.

As she perked her ears and followed Gale’s gaze when he turned back towards the noise, a faint whistling noise floated into her consciousness. She’d never heard anything like it, and now she was curious.

“I want to go check it out, but we can’t leave the others,” Gale fretted, head swaying slightly as he wavered.

“They’ll be fine. Once we see what it is, we’ll come back. Anyway, I bet they’re already heading towards that weird noise,” Cobra told him reasonably. Gale shot her a grateful smile before running forwards and leaping into the air.

Cobra ran after him, beating her wings hard in a futile attempt to reach him. Once Gale was comfortably soaring above her, he slowed and waited for her to catch up.

“So what do you think that noise is?” Gale asked once she was skimming across the sky next to him. Their wings beat in unison, separating them by a wingspan, but Cobra could still hear her friend over the sound of the wind whistling past her ears.

“I’ve never heard anything like it before,” she hummed, gazing ahead to where she could still hear the strange noise. It was getting louder as they flew.

“Maybe it’s one of those old human things Java told us about,” Gale mused. Java was an elder in their village, and she often told stories of great human cities that their ancestors had torn apart. According to her tales, huge stone towers lay in pieces on cracked pathways, and rusty metal contraptions littered the ground. Broken shards of a smooth substance that filled holes in the buildings lay scattered across the stone.

“Best idea we have,” Cobra assented, peering ahead. Gray smoke was rising into the air, moving across the horizon, and she’d never seen anything like it.

“Is something on fire?” Gale asked from her left, and she shook her head, still watching the smoky trail.

“I have no idea, but smoke isn’t supposed to do that, right?” she worried, fixing her gaze on the smoke and pushing herself faster. Gale followed suit without question.

As they drew close to the smoke trail, the noise they’d been hearing grew so loud Cobra thought her ears might stop working. The shrill whistling was deafening, and the source soon came into sight.

A huge human contraption--vehicle, Cobra remembered Java saying—made of rusting metal thundered along a familiar track made of parallel wooden bars set between two winding pieces of metal. Cobra was used to seeing the tracks, but she’d never seen them anything other than empty, so she didn’t know what they were for. The tracks faded into the distance both in front of and behind the vehicle, and Cobra turned to the left to follow the vehicle’s path. They had intercepted it from the side, and now she wanted to see where it was going.

Almost as soon as she turned, Cobra regretted it. The vehicle was headed straight for hers and Gale’s village.

Gale must have come to the same conclusion, because he wheeled in the air to block her path.

“It’s going towards our home!” he shouted over the noise of the vehicle, and Cobra nodded grimly.

“Human vehicles never go near dragon villages. That means there must be a dragon who wants to use it against its own kind,” she yelled back.

Gale’s expression turned stony, and he whirled around, beating his wings hard enough to knock Cobra off-balance from the sudden draft. She quickly righted herself and launched herself after him.

—————

The vehicle was faster than them, and soon they were clinging onto its roof as it sped along the tracks, shuddering and vibrating underneath their claws.

It took another ten minutes for the thing to reach their village, but even from her perch on top of it, Cobra could see fearful faces peering out of homes.

A minute later, Cobra felt the vehicle start to slow, and the deafening whistling returned. As soon as it drew close to a stop, she leapt off the roof and dove for her village, landing in front of a group of frightened dragons. A moment later, Gale touched down on her left.

A tense silence enveloped the whole village, and Cobra kept her gaze fixed on the vehicle’s smoking front end. Eventually, a single dragon appeared from a giant, square hole in the side. He flew gracefully down to land a few feet away from Gale and Cobra, and Cobra could see a malicious glint in his eyes. Before she could say anything, he grinned.

“Fire!” The single word was a command and a gleeful opportunity all at once as dragons suddenly poured out from the sides of the vehicle. Fireballs rained from the sky, and Cobra heard screams and pounding footsteps as the dragons behind her fled.

She whipped around and stared at her village, which now crackled as homes went up in flames. Disbelieving, she ran forwards and skidded through the burning buildings, running a path she knew by heart. In seconds she was staring at her own home, flames licking at the blue sky above her, ashes fluttering down to settle on her wings and back.

“Come on, we have to get anyone left here out,” Gale’s voice sounded from behind her, and she turned to look at him. He only offered a grimly determined smile, but it was enough. Cobra shook her head and ran forward, following her friend as they zigzagged through their beloved village.

Flames crackled and spit around her, and the screams, though dimmer, had never completely stopped. Cobra tried to block out the deranged caterwauling coming from who she assumed to be the enemy dragons, and instead focused on Gale’s dusty tail-tip whipping back and forth ahead of her.

The friends ran past a screaming enemy dragon, wounded on the sand, and plunged into the building he had been trying to destroy. Cowering against the only wall not already burning were three tiny dragons, younger than Cobra and Gale. Cobra seized one by the horns and threw him out the door before it set itself ablaze again after her and Gale’s entrance.

Gale grabbed the other two and glanced sideways at Cobra, and she blasted the wall they had been huddled against with a burst of fire. The wall shattered and exploded outwards, and Gale leapt through. Cobra followed and watched as he shoved the two small dragons towards their trembling third sibling before whirling to find anyone else who needed help.

Cobra heard wailing coming from a house nearby and went to run towards it, but suddenly a weight dropped onto her back so hard that her legs crumpled beneath her. Her head hit the sand, bruising her jaw, and she struggled to turn it so that she could see Gale.

He was crouched in a similar position next to her, with a huge enemy dragon pinning him to the floor. Cobra mirrored his grimace as the dragons on their backs fastened restraints around their wings. Cobra thrashed as her captor locked a heavy metal band around her neck, but she wasn’t strong enough to shove him off. She glanced sideways and noticed Gale’s captor fastening the neck band to a similar band around his tail with long metal chains. As she watched, she felt the dragon above her close a band around her own tail, and then the clinking of chains told her what he was doing next.

Gale struggled to stand next to her, but he barely lifted his chest off the ground before his captor shoved a foreleg across the back of his neck to hold him down. The enemy dragon connected his wing bands to his neck restraint before wrestling a metal muzzle onto his face. The muzzle looked like a cage, with leather straps winding tightly around the back of Gale’s head.

Cobra clenched her claws underneath her as her captor fastened a muzzle around her jaws next. Finally, their enemies let them up, but immediately Cobra realized that at some point she had been hobbled by chains linking cuffs around her ankles together. When she stumbled a step forward, the cuffs dug into her scales and she hissed.

“Move on,” a gruff voice behind her ordered, and she glanced back to see their captors standing behind them. One of them prodded Cobra in the flank, and she reluctantly struggled to walk, Gale keeping pace with her.

In front of them was the vehicle, and as they neared it Cobra’s captor commanded, “Onto the Train.”

So it was called a train. Cobra pulled herself up into the section of it they had come to, and Gale appeared behind her once she was in. Small, cramped cages lined the walls of the train car, stacked on top of one another until the car was full to bursting. Inside lay all different types of dragons, watching Cobra and Gale with a strange disinterest.

“In,” Gale’s captor grunted, and Gale warily eyed the open cage in front of him. Cobra stared into hers and tried to take a step back, but her captor shoved her forward.

Her head hit the top of the cage with a loud bang, and she instinctively ducked away from it. Behind her, her captor propelled her the rest of the way in and pushed the door shut with a heavy clang.

Dimly Cobra heard Gale shouting something, and then a grunt as he met the same fate as she had, but her head was blossoming with fiery pain and all she could do was drop her chin to the cage floor and close her eyes, hoping that when she woke up, everything would look better.

—————

The smell of rust thickened the air and made it hard to breathe, and Cobra’s nostrils flared as she opened her eyes groggily. Almost no light filtered through the slits in the sides of the train car, and Cobra blinked, trying to see in near blackness. She tried to breathe shallowly, peering around the car at the other inhabitants.

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could make out slumped forms in every cage she could see, and she could hear the harsh breathing of the occupants of the cages above her. She looked closer, searching for Gale, but his dark gray coloring made it nearly impossible to pick him out.

In the cage to her right, a skinny brown dragon poked his nose through the bars and sniffed at her wing. Cobra turned, snarling, and the dragon pulled back, blinking in surprise. Cobra glared at it, trying to tuck her wings in closer despite the metal bands fastening them to her sides, and stood as well as she could in the cramped cage.

“Whoa, whoa, easy there. Ain’t nobody’s gonna hurt’cha here, sweetie,” the dragon rumbled, his voice low and raspy. He had a strange accent that Cobra couldn’t place, and she figured he must be from outside of her neighboring territory. Suddenly the dragon laughed, a deranged and cruel sound, and she looked sharply at him.

“Well, ‘cept the Masters. They got all the pow’r ‘round here. Don’t give ‘em a reason to hate ‘cha, and you just might be alive by the end of this,” he rambled, eyes glinting with a delusional light. Cobra shrank back against the left wall of her cage, as far away from the strange dragon as possible, but she couldn’t quench the burning curiosity that had kindled inside her.

“Who are the Masters?” she asked, slightly afraid of the answer. The dragon grinned. Cobra tried not to grimace when she saw that his teeth were bloodstained.

“They’re the rulers, the ones who destroyed your home,” he replied, and Cobra shoved away memories of burning houses and terrified dragons. She desperately tried not to think about her family.

“What did they do to you?” she asked next, eyeing what little she could see of his bloody, scarred scales and torn wings.

“I was a loser of the Races one too many times. They tore ma’ wings up real bad after the las’ one, jus’ so I couldn’ race no more. Good riddance, I say!” the dragon spat, bloody spittle flying from between his teeth and spattering on the floor of his cage. He seemed too far gone to care, though.

“The Races?” Cobra asked hesitantly, tensing at the sight of the bloody cage floor.

“You’ll find out soon enough, sweetheart. You’ll see.”

Cobra hesitated again, watching as he flicked his tail around his back legs. The end had a chunk torn out of it.

“What’s your name?” she finally asked.

The dragon threw back his head and laughed so loudly that the prisoner to his right hissed at him to be quiet. Cobra caught the muttered words, “Crazy lunatic!” before the prisoner turned away again.

“No one needs names on this Train,” the deranged dragon answered, “but if ya really wanna know, ma’ name’s Jackrabbit. Ya’ know, as an insult to my racing ability. Everyone else just calls me Jack.”

“Yeah, Jabberjack, ‘cause he won’t shut up!” a prisoner somewhere above Cobra shouted, and laughs echoed from all corners of the train car. Some prisoners even gave jeers and mocking whistles, and Cobra got the idea that Jackrabbit was only well-liked because the other prisoners could taunt him without any repercussions.

Jackrabbit turned away and laid his head on his forearms, but he didn’t look upset. He hardly even looked like he knew what was happening.

Cobra shuddered. She needed to find Gale and get off the Train, because she was terrified of what would happen if they didn’t.


	2. Chapter Two

Cobra listened to the steady rumbling of the Train underneath her, curling her claws in when they started to ache from the vibrations of the metal cage floor. The Train had been in constant motion for hours now, and the car was so dark by now that Cobra couldn’t see anything. Even the outline of her cage bars had faded long ago, and she was fairly certain night had fallen outside.

Echoing snores and raspy breaths filled the otherwise silent Train car, but Cobra hadn’t slept yet at all. Her stomach was still in knots imagining just how much worse their situation could get, and her mind was spinning too fast to rest.

Suddenly the car jerked forward so hard that the cages inside slid sideways, clanging against each other and the sides of the car. Cobra could tell that the dragons inside had woken by the absence of snores; in a split second the car had gone completely silent.

Faint screeching from outside the car filtered in, and Cobra felt the rumbling beneath her cage slow. Finally, after a long moment, it ceased altogether.

The dragons waited in silence for another few minutes, and Cobra heard shouting and banging noises from up ahead.

Starlight glowed from above as the car door was shoved open. Silhouetted by the moon was a huge, muscular dragon standing on the edge of the opening, and Cobra instinctively shrank back.

The dragon stepped forward and grabbed the door of the nearest cage, unlocking it with a key he held in one foreleg. He reached inside and hauled the occupant out, pinning the poor dragon down while he attached a metal chain to the back of the dragon’s neck cuff. He proceeded to drag the next dragon out of its cage, linking this one to the first one, and continued until he had made a line of dragons, all chained together.

He handed the beginning of the chain off to another dragon outside the Train car, and the first few dragons in the line were pulled out of the car in order to make room for new ones to be added on.

When he got to her cage, Cobra jumped out before he could reach in, and the dragon laughed. Cobra winced at the cruel undertone.

“You won’t be so eager once you’ve been here awhile, newbie,” he warned, fastening the chain to her collar and shoving her forward. Cobra resisted the urge to glare at him and stood while he attached the next dragon behind her before following the line out of the Train car.

Only two dragons were chained behind her before the car was empty, and the dragon jumped out of the car after them and took up a position at the rear of the line. From somewhere up ahead came a call to move on, and the line began to shuffle forward.

Cobra followed Jackrabbit, who was chained in front of her, and tried to get a glimpse of where Gale was, but she couldn’t see much in the dim light of the stars.

The only thing she could see in detail was where they were headed.

Up ahead was a huge structure, round and open-roofed, and cheers echoed from inside. Around the structure were toppled stone buildings and twisted pieces of metal, and patches of ground burned around them.

As the line of prisoners drew closer, Cobra stepped in a puddle of slimy, black liquid, and it stuck to her claws when she tried to shake it off. The firelight from nearby cast rainbows across its oily surface, and as Cobra watched, it suddenly went up in flames. The dragons next to it leapt away, hissing, and the line shuffled a few paces to the left.

Distracted by the dancing fires and the sticky substance in between her claws, Cobra looked up a moment later to see the giant building right in front of them. Rusted metal signs stood, bent and toppling, around the area, and Cobra saw one with broken electrical wires that read ‘Gas.’

She was pulled away from the destroyed remnants of what must have once been a human settlement when the line was ushered towards the giant building. Cobra could barely make out a dark hole in the side of the wall, and the line of dragons began disappearing through it. Dragon after dragon went through, until finally Cobra stepped over the threshold into near blackness.

Turning her head, she saw a small square of light glowing ahead of them, and the dragon leading the line ducked through. The cheers from before grew so loud they were nearly deafening as Cobra approached the light and followed Jackrabbit through it.

A huge arena opened up on the other side, and Cobra blinked as light assaulted her eyes. Lining the walls of the arena were masses of dragons, shouting and whistling as the prisoners were brought into the open. So many torches blazed around the sides of the structure that Cobra had to look away from the walls. Circling around the arena was a hard-packed dirt track, fenced in on either side. The line went through an open gate in one side.

Ahead of her, three more lines of prisoners, each with about twenty dragons, stood silently in the center of the arena. As the dragons controlling her line led them to a place beside the other prisoners, Cobra chanced a glance sideways and saw another line of dragons entering through the same wall she had.

It took another twenty minutes for all the prisoners to be led through the entrance and lined up in the center, and there ended up being eight total lines of dragons. Cobra quickly added them up in her head and came up with around 160 prisoners standing in this arena. She had no idea if there were more still locked inside the Train cars, waiting in the darkness for someone to return.

“These are your contestants!” a loud voice shouted over the dull roar of the arena stands. The watching dragons instantly quieted down, hanging on every word as the dragon who had spoken continued.

“Eight lines, twenty each, so choose wisely! You only get eight bets, one per Race, and as you all know, no taking anything back once you’ve made your choices. We’ll start with the line on the left, and move to the right as we continue. Get ready for the first Race!”

The dragon flew upwards and swooped across the arena to land on a raised platform off to the side, and an uproar of cheering followed his words.

Cobra’s line began to get herded away, alongside six others, but she caught a glimpse of the watching dragons swapping something with each other. She was too far away to see what it was, but clinking sounds filled the arena as the currency was exchanged.

Darkness swamped her vision once again as her line was led back into the side walls. The prisoners were led to large cages lined up neatly against one wall, and an opening in front of them allowed the occupants to be able to see into the arena.

Cobra was shoved into a cage after the dragons in front of her were unchained from the line and given their own cages, and the door was locked securely behind her. She immediately turned around, eager to watch the proceedings and get an idea of what was going on.

Jackrabbit, in a cage next to her, laughed. Cobra briefly wondered if she’d ever stop hearing demented, cruel laughter.

“These are the Races, honey. Run to win, and if y’er too slow, ya’ lose. Like me.” He sat in the middle of his cage and stared out at the prisoners in the arena, peering at them like he himself was betting on a winner.

“That one’s been here a long time,” he said suddenly, pointing with his nose at a black dragon. He was currently being shoved into position, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of his line. They had been unlinked from each other, and as Cobra watched, a huge metal wall made of interlocking bars rose up behind them with a squealing noise of metal on metal.

“Those are the Masters. They control us and run the Train,” Jackrabbit added, gesturing to the dragons standing by the prisoners. Ahead of each prisoner was a box, and the Masters began unchaining the metal bands around each dragon’s neck, tail, wings, and ankles. The bands and muzzles stayed, but the prisoners could walk or run freely now.

The Masters shoved the prisoners forward into the boxes, closing the back gates behind them. As the Masters were let out of the caged-in starting section, the crowd started a countdown.

“Ten, nine, eight…”

“Watch the little black one I pointed out earlia’. The longa’ you’re trapped here, the betta’ you get at these things,” Jackrabbit interjected. Cobra nodded and kept her gaze fixed on the box the black dragon had disappeared into. He was three from the left, a fairly easy position to watch.

“Where is ‘here?’” she asked.

“The Slave Train,” Jackrabbit answered. “You’ll soon see why.”

“...four, three, two, one, go!”

The countdown ended with sadistically excited cheers as the boxes’ front gates opened with a unified clang. The dragons inside shot out, claws gouging out clumps of dirt from the ground as they tried to shove themselves forward as fast as possible.

Cobra looked at Jackrabbit, confused. They were racing, yes, but she had expected something a lot more...sinister.

Jackrabbit grinned, a strange light glinting behind his dark eyes. “Just wait until the end,” he answered her unspoken question.

Cobra turned back to the race, quickly spotting the black dragon among the crowd of racers. Most of them were close together, fairly evenly matched in speed, although a few stragglers followed behind the main pack.

The black dragon, though, was pulling ahead of his competitors, a determined yet fearful expression on his face as he ran. Cobra watched him pass the dragon in first place as the racers streaked past the starting boxes, and she glanced sideways at Jackrabbit.

“How many laps do they run?” she asked, still watching the race.

“Two,” he answered immediately, and she wondered if he really did know what she was thinking sometimes.

The black dragon had put three dragon-lengths of distance between himself and the other racers by the time they were halfway around the second lap. Behind him, a wiry orange dragon put on a burst of speed and closed the distance between them by half in the next quarter lap.

“That orange one might beat him,” Cobra commented absently.

Jackrabbit’s grin was so big she could see it in her peripheral vision. “He neva’ loses,” he said confidently. Cobra guessed he’d been a prisoner for a long time if he’d seen enough to say that.

Back out on the racetrack, the orange dragon was closing in on the black one. The rest of the racers were far behind them, and the finish line was nearing. Cobra bit her tongue inside the muzzle, suddenly scared for the black dragon despite what Jackrabbit had said. When did I start caring about this dragon I don’t even know? she wondered.

Just as the orange dragon came neck and neck with the black one, the black dragon shot forward as he put on a burst of speed. Cobra gaped as he crossed the finish line well ahead of his orange shadow.

“He wasn’t sprinting this whole time?” she whispered, shock seeping through her limbs and curling around her stomach.

Jackrabbit shook his head. “No one’s eva’ beaten him, eva’ since I came here. The little devil’s fast. I suppose that’s why they call him Devil. He’s a tricksta’.”

“What’s his real name?” Cobra asked, curious.

“I don’t think many of us know, so keep this to y’erself, but he’s called Ebony,” Jackrabbit answered, lowering his voice. Cobra nodded her assent and turned back to watch the next racers get herded onto the field.

This time, the dragons had been separated from each other in their cages, like she had, so a Master walked each one to the starting line before unchaining them and pushing them into the boxes like the first racers. The following countdown was familiar and no less excited than the last one, but Cobra could tell that some voices were louder than before. She guessed that they had lost bets on the first race and were ready for another chance.

Ten short seconds later, although Cobra was sure they were even shorter for the dragons trapped in the boxes, the gates opened for the second time of the night. The racers shot forward, pounding down the track. Dust clouded the air, dry from the fiery torches blazing around the arena walls, and several of the racers struggled to run as they were blinded.

Cobra focused on the other side of the dust cloud, where the racers would reappear in a moment. The first dragon out was a lithe gray male with long spiraling horns and a lengthy build. Jackrabbit’s whisper surprised Cobra into looking at him as the light gray dragon’s thin tail whipped the dust back into the air.

“That’s Ghost. He’s a newbie, been here mebbe a month. But you betch’ur wings he’s faster than any of ‘em. I’m still waitin’ for the day they put him up against Devil.” Jackrabbit nodded sagely, like he could already see that moment happening and knew exactly how it would unfold.

Cobra turned back to the race and saw a flash of white against a duller background and looked closer, her heart suddenly leaping into her throat. She recognized that head shape, those small horns. Her breath caught in her throat.

Her friends, Razor and Ash, whom she had thought were safe back home looking for her and Gale, were running side by side on the track.

Jackrabbit must have heard her panic, because he turned to study her.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” This time, the pet name didn’t sound quite so sickening, and Cobra realized he was actually worried. She had no idea why this strange dragon had taken such a liking to her, but she found it weirdly comforting. She may not know if he could be trusted, but his feelings seemed genuine, and he was very informative. If she was going to escape, she would need his insight.

“My friends, I was with them before my village was attacked, but I didn’t see them. I thought they’d gotten away, maybe that they were looking for me...but they’re here…” she forced herself to say, staring at the blurred shapes of Razor and Ash out on the track.

Razor’s movements were just as calculated and graceful as always, and Ash’s compact body struggled along beside the bigger dragon. Cobra realized her gaze was fixed absently on Razor’s dark orange horns bobbing like beacons among the other racers, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away.

“I’m sorry,” Jackrabbit said unexpectedly. Cobra finally tore her gaze from her friends to stare at him instead, the thick sorrow laced into his voice striking straight through her heart. That’s not right, why is he so sad? she thought briefly, focusing her gaze on his dark eyes.

A flash of affection shimmered in their depths before he blinked, and it was gone.

“There’s a reason you’re saying that, and not reassuring me that they’ll be okay,” Cobra ventured, and Jackrabbit’s face fell even more. His head drooped as he regarded her through half-closed eyes. “...You don’t think they’ll make it out,” Cobra finished reluctantly. Saying the words aloud made her chest constrict painfully, but she was starting to believe the same was true of herself.

“No. No one makes it out alive,” Jackrabbit murmured solemnly, and he slumped into a ball on the floor of his cage, his head draped across his front legs. Cobra watched him for a moment, sudden and absolute fear forming a hard knot in her stomach. She struggled to take a breath in and curled against her cage wall that she shared with Jackrabbit, staring out at the racers now halfway through their second lap.

Jackrabbit seemed to sense her unrest and shuffled around until he was stretched out next to her, their scales barely brushing through the bars.

Cobra saw Razor, still refusing to leave Ash even though his legs were much longer than the white dragon’s, pass the starting boxes among the middle of the pack. Jackrabbit laid his head against the bars next to her.

“They’ll be safe fer now. Only those in the las’ four places get punished. Same way the firs’ four get rewarded,” he whispered. Cobra tilted her head sideways so that their horns touched. The familiar presence of another dragon was her only stability in this cruel place.

“Do they all get the same punishment?” she asked hesitantly. Jackrabbit snorted a plume of smoke into the air, watching it drift upwards, wreathing around the bars of his cage ceiling.

“No. The ones who came las’ are starved fer as many days as seconds they los’ by. The ones who finished firs’ are given ex’ra food fer as many days as seconds they won by. The only way to stay alive—and keep y’er stren’th up fer the next Race—is by winnin’,” he explained.

Cobra started to nod, but a sudden crash made her jerk her head up. Her horn knocked against the cage bars and sent dull aching pain lancing through her head.

Next to her, Jackrabbit sat up, watching her fearful gaze stare into the darkness in the direction of the noise.

“That’s the Masters puttin’ away the dragons from the last Race,” he said quietly. “You can hear ‘em cuz we’re next.”

Cobra crouched in the back corner of her cage, realizing vaguely that she was still pressed against the bars she shared with Jackrabbit. The older dragon gazed out at the darkness with a kind of resigned sadness, like he knew he wasn’t about to eat again anytime soon. Cobra noticed his claws were broken and dull, and she guessed it was from running so much.

“You’re up next!” a voice called from the darkness, and a second later a Master loomed in front of Cobra’s cage.

He reached in and seized her by the horns, dragging her out and away from the rest of the prisoners she was caged with. Eyes flashed in the dark from nearby cages, and Cobra watched as Jackrabbit stood up to lean against the door of his prison. His expression was cloaked in shadow as the Master took her away, but the agonised worry on his face was clear as day.

The Master holding Cobra jerked her forward, and she reluctantly turned back to face where she was going, leaving Jackrabbit behind. They went through the same opening in the wall they had first used to get into the arena, and the sudden uproar hurt Cobra’s ears. The cheering was much louder here than back in the cages.

She struggled to look around as the Master unhooked her chains and shoved her forward into the waiting box. She managed to catch a glimpse of Jackrabbit, dragged out onto the arena field and into the box to her left, before the gate closed behind her.

There was just enough room inside the box to flex her tail and legs, and she used the extra space to stretch out her sore muscles. Without the chains, she could walk and run, but the heavy metal bands encircling her limbs would make it difficult to gain speed.

The cheering from the watching dragons was muffled inside the box, and only small holes in the ceiling let light through. Cobra tensed, thin beams of light filtering through the box and falling across her nose, as she heard the countdown begin outside.

The fear still coiled in her belly constricted as the numbers got closer to zero, and she crouched at the front of the box, trying to ready herself to run.

“...Three, two, one, go!” the dragons outside bellowed, and the box gates opened with a clang that vibrated in Cobra’s ears.

She leaped forward, pure fear driving her legs faster than she ever could run on her own. Her tail whipped the ground behind her, and she lifted it off the ground so it wouldn’t slow her down. Cheers and screams surrounded her and muffled her senses, and the pounding of dragon claws on the hard dirt made her whole body vibrate. The ground shook underneath her. Her claws ached from grabbing at the ground. Her world blurred into a muddle of loud noises and bright torchlight. Dragons’ faces, all terrified, swam in her peripherals.

“Come on, sweetheart, stay with me!” a familiar voice cut through the white noise filling Cobra’s head. Only one dragon called her sweetheart. She turned her head to the right and glanced over her shoulder.

Behind her, Jackrabbit sprinted along the track, uncaring of the dragons passing him as he kept his gaze focused on Cobra.

“You’ve got speed, I can see it in the way you move. Snap out o’ it and run! You could have a chance to win this!” Cobra remembered what Jackrabbit had said he was punished for as more dragons streamed past them.

“But what about you?” she asked, concern sharpening her mind and senses once again.

“Don’ worry ‘bout me, sweetheart. There ain’t nothin’ you can do fer me now,” Jackrabbit answered, already beginning to slow. He was breathing hard, and the ripped edges of his wings fluttered in the breeze of passing dragons.

Cobra considered that, but then Jackrabbit looked up. “Win this fer me, ‘kay?”

He let out one last harsh wheeze before slowing to a trot, and Cobra turned back forward. He was right, she was fast. There was a reason her mother had named her after a snake.

She would win this, for her only companion in this cruel place, and because of what he’d been through at the hands of his captors.

Cobra focused her gaze on the inside fence of the track, passing in a blur as she poured on speed. She had slowed considerably while she was in the first half lap, and now she found she had plenty of energy reserved for a burst of speed.

About half of the dragons racing were ahead of her, and she passed the first two within the next quarter lap. Now that she was in the middle of the pack, she was forced to shorten her stride and weave around dragons as they approached the end of the first lap.

As the racers condensed to stream around the starting boxes, Cobra eyed the box ahead of her. Going around it would put her in the middle of the others, but finding a clearer path would take her too far to the outside of the track. She had to think of another option if she wanted to win this race.

Cobra sized up the box, guessed whether her claws would hold, bunched her hind legs under her, and leaped.

She just barely managed to catch her back claws on the side of the box, her front claws hooked over the far top edge. Straining her hindquarters, she shoved the rest of her body up and over the top lip, then pushed off the opposite edge with her front legs. She sailed over the box and over several surprised racers down below, hitting the ground hard slightly ahead of the main pack.

Now only three racers ran ahead of her, and she dug her back claws into the dirt as she propelled herself forward. She had enough stamina to make it the last lap, but she could only make the last half lap in a full sprint. She had to get neck and neck with those racers in the next few seconds.

Cobra clenched her jaw and tucked her bound wings in as close to her body as they could get, stretching her neck out ahead of her. She made herself as streamlined as possible and put on a bit more speed, lengthening her stride to conserve energy. She was gaining on the other racers, and at the quarter lap mark she passed the first one.

She ignored the aching in her claws and forced herself to go faster, running alongside the second place racer for a moment before passing him, too. Now she just had one left.

Her breath came in short wheezes, but the wind whistling past her ears drowned out the sounds. Her leg muscles ached. She’d never tried to run this fast before, had never had a reason to. She narrowed her eyes. She had a reason now.

Picturing the jagged tears in Jackrabbit’s wings and the scars crisscrossing his body, she waited until she streaked past the half lap mark before bursting forward in as fast a sprint as she could make her body go.

She opened her stride until her shoulders and hips were stretched to their limit every time she moved. Her legs pumped as she forced them to move faster, pushing at the ground with every step.

The racer in front of her was sprinting too, aware of the end of the race getting closer. Cobra snorted a stream of smoke into the air, the muzzle still locked around her jaws beginning to feel claustrophobic as she sucked in oxygen.

She opened her mouth inside the muzzle, and the extra bit of air flowing past her jaws was all she needed.

Cobra overtook the first place racer just as the last quarter lap began, and she pushed herself to keep up the speed as she covered the last piece of ground left before the end.

She streaked across the finish line well ahead of the other racers, slowing to a stop as soon as she crossed the line of starting boxes.

Her breath passed her lips in sharp pants, and she nearly fell as her knees trembled underneath her, but she looked up to where Jackrabbit was still running in last place. He met her gaze as he crossed the finish line after the other racers, and even though he had lost, Cobra had never seen him look so happy.

Right then, quivering with exhaustion and wondering what else the future held, Cobra vowed to free every last prisoner of the Slave Train.


End file.
